1. Field
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and in particular to a database model. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for using associative memory learning agent technology to identify part duplications and substitute parts in parts catalogs.
2. Background
Businesses frequently maintain numerous parts management databases in support of various commodity platforms and families of platforms. A commodity includes, but is not limited to, any equipment, vehicle, machine, device, or other manufactured item. A commodity may be, for example, an airplane, a car, a boat, a computer, a printer, a radar, an engine, a transmission, or any other device or manufactured item having one or more parts.
A parts catalog is a list of parts used to assemble one or more commodities. Parts catalogs typically identify parts by a unique part number (PN). Parts catalogs also frequently provide a description for each part number, referred to as a part number description. The part number description is a human readable text description of the part identified by a given part number.
Parts identified in different parts catalogs are frequently common in nature, made of common materials, and/or engineered in a common manner. An interchangeable part is an identical part to a specified part that has a different part number than the specified part. An interchangeable part may also include a similar part to a specified part that may be used in place of a specified part. Similar parts are referred to as substitute or alternate parts. As used herein, a specified part may be a part that is selected by a user, designer, manufacturer, and/or any other entity or process. Thus, a specified part may also be referred to as a selected part.
A parts catalog is often developed independently of other parts catalogs. That is, parts catalogs do not follow a uniform system for assigning part numbers that is consistent with other parts catalogs. Many parts that are duplicate parts or alternate parts are assigned differing part numbers or descriptions that do not allow them to be easily related to their sister parts for another platform or family of platforms.
For example, a bolt may be identified by one part number in a first parts catalog for an engine, and the exact same bolt may be given a different part number in a second parts catalog for an air conditioner. A simple query to locate identical parts in different parts catalogs based on part numbers would not accurately identify interchangeable parts. Therefore, it is generally necessary to search the text descriptions corresponding for each part number in differing parts catalogs to identify interchangeable parts.
Parts catalogs frequently provide part number descriptions with widely varying amounts of information. In other words, different parts catalogs often provide part description information in differing formats with differing degrees of information describing the part. For example, a first parts catalog may describe a bolt as “zinc plated” while a second parts catalog may describe an identical or equivalent bolt as “zn coated.” While these two descriptions are essentially the same, the differing formats of the text description may prevent traditional relational database queries from identifying the bolt in the first parts catalog as being equivalent to the bolt in the second parts catalog because currently available relational database systems identify interchangeable parts by matching identical part number descriptions. Thus, if a part number description in a first parts catalog contains a misspelled word, different abbreviations, or places the words in the description in a different order than a second parts catalog, a relational database query may not identify an interchangeable part in the second parts catalog because the descriptions for the part numbers are not identical.
Moreover, as platforms are modified over time and replacement parts are introduced into the system, updated part number descriptions that highlight differences in the modified platforms are often resident in data fields that are not readily searched using traditional relational database queries. Therefore, when a user enters a relational database query to identify interchangeable parts in a set of parts catalogs, the relational database may be unable to accurately identify all duplicate and/or substitute parts for the specified part.
To avoid this problem, a human user can manually read through each parts catalog line by line to identify duplicate and substitute parts. However, parts catalogs can be of significant size. Therefore, this process can be time consuming, burdensome, and cost prohibitive. Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code identifying interchangeable parts in catalogs.